Sunday, October 24, 2010

OUR NEW WORLD

Typically I would not endorse starting a blog with weeping, but in this case I'll have to make an exception.

At 6:40 this morning, we untied the lines and slowly pulled out of our home slip in Manteo, and that's when I started tearing up.

The waning moon got up early to see us off, and just as we headed under the Manteo causeway bridge, like some sort of weird portal, we entered the dawn of our new world.

In a continued stroke of our lives as a Hallmark movie, the moon and a big, corny piece of my heart stayed behind in Manteo.

And that's when the real weeping began, not in an austere, Ingrid Bergman sort of way, but more of a Meg Ryan, messy, he-just-didn't-want-to-marry-ME sort of way.

My wracking sobs were bubbling up from a deep bilge full of emotions: relief, sadness, nostalgia, excitement, profound joy and even a little fear laced heavily with exhaustion.

Last night, the seemingly unshakeable grip of the land had us pinned to the ground, right up to the midnight hour. As we were entering our route in the new GPS, it didn't respond like the manual said it should, not allowing us to save our route, perpetually, repeatedly. One time I zoomed in and the entire screen filled with capital A's and foreign symbols.

After four straight hours of repeatedly entering the waypoints (a lot of them), rebooting, cursing and questioning the premise of our entire future, the GPS warmed to us and faultlessly saved the route.

This morning we left Manteo on four hours of sleep, nervous, fidgety and lacking faith in ourselves and the GPS. Chip and the GPS performed flawlessly. I sat on the life jackets and wept.

I'm sitting here thinking how that seems an inauspicious way to begin our new life, but come to think of it, I guess that's how all new lives begin: pop out of the womb into a new world and then start wailing. All I did was add safety equipment.